Silver Answers
by Kairos Impending
Summary: The world may change, but love is eternal. This is where I'll be putting my B/A short stories that don't merit a file of their own. Each chapter is a different stand-alone featuring Buffy and Angel; check its info for a rating and summary.
1. One Fear Seven Ways

**Title: **One Fear Seven Ways

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **R

**Disclaimer: **Nothing belongs to me.

**Summary: **Inside Angel's mind during a few key moments from the first three seasons. This was actually the first story I wrote after "Let Me In", but I wasn't sure what to do with it until I had collected some other short pieces to follow it.

* * *

**i. gasp**

The sunlight engulfed the car like poison gas; the humans walked through it unscathed, like gods. One was sitting on the steps of her school, having the last ordinary day of her life. She had an open heart and a lollipop and some clothes that he guessed were trendy. She was beautiful. She was so, so young.

Before long there was a man there talking to her, and this was how it happened, he had been told. The man was a Watcher, and now, she was the Slayer. Now she was alone.

A girl like that had never had enemies before, but her enemies were about to become her whole life. They were going to come in through the heart she had so carelessly left open, bruise it and tear it and change her forever. They were going to take the brightly colored sugar away from her lips and replace it with the taste of ashes. They were going to rip the trendy clothes off of her body and claim it in any way they could, and she would see what her own blood looked like and she would understand pain and share it with those she hated because there wouldn't be anyone else there.

It wasn't fair _(since when is anything fair?). _It wasn't right _(since when do you care about what's right?). _It wasn't her world _(then whose world is it?)._

_ ..._His. It was his world. It was the one thing he had that she didn't, this comprehension of evil, this deeply personal terror of the light that confined him now to a blacked-out capsule as if it were his gas mask. The evil was part of him and it had ruined him, and maybe now it could save her.

Or it could take her down with him. Whistler better know what he was doing.

**ii. shiver**

He knew as soon as he walked away that he had done the wrong thing. Something had changed between them as soon as she donned his jacket- she was appreciative, charmed even. She let herself like him a little bit. That wasn't the plan at all.

Up until that point he had managed it well, he thought. He could back her up without even being seen for the most part, and when he did have to communicate face to face, he overplayed the mystery and mocked her openly, and of course there had been no reason for her to like him. It could have gone on like that, but no. He just had to see her smile, didn't he? He picked up his pace, wanting to get home, and wondered why he had gone so far as to give her his jacket.

_Because she was cold._

Well, it ended there. He was supposed to be protecting her from demons, not temporary shivers. He was supposed to be protecting her from himself. This wasn't rocket science. Trust had to come first, then full disclosure, then, _maybe,_ friendship. Not romance. Why was he even thinking about romance? No romance and no jackets.

_But she was cold._

And he was thinking about romance because she was, dammit. He hadn't mistaken that look in her eyes, that sweet scent emanating from her. She was elevating him and it gave him a foothold to the next step if he chose to take it. This had all been part of his routine, long ago. Charm the girls into their own doom. It came so naturally he could have done it in his sleep. It was exactly why he couldn't allow her to want him.

Next time he saw her he would have to say something mean. Her feelings toward him were still tenuous; there was a chance to alter them before they matured into real desire. Nothing he could do about his feelings toward her, how he kept imagining the way her breasts would feel in his hands and her skin under his teeth, but ignoring his own perversions was habit at this point. She was the one with a life ahead of her. Maybe he should just turn around and demand the jacket back.

_But she was cold. _

**iii. sweat**

Now that their clothes were gone, she had relinquished her passionate frenzy and turned shy under his eyes, letting him study her bare body and doing the same to his. For the moment there were a few inches between them, space that seemed wider than it was in contrast to the close contact that had preceded it. Closing the gap and taking her back into his arms was more difficult than he had anticipated. They both knew where this was headed, but did she really know what she was offering? Set aside the whole question of whether he deserved it. He knew he didn't. It wasn't about that; it was about her and what she wanted. And he knew and she knew what she wanted, and it could be good, he could make it feel good for her, but there was no way to get there without demolishing a barrier that was so much more significant than he had ever realized. She was so new. Was she even aware of what her first time meant for her?

In a way he was better acquainted with a woman's sexuality than she was. He had taken so many maidenheads, rejoicing each time in the sensation of breaking through, the little cries the girls would make, and the blood, oh God, there was nothing like it. From the chandler's daughter he had met in his teens to the gypsy girl who had died screaming, he had always sought out the virgins, and she didn't know that, either. She didn't know what kind of sin the man she had in bed with her had traversed before coming to the holy land. How could she allow him to touch her?

"What is it?" she whispered. The desire in her eyes was tinged with apprehension: she was waiting to feel him, wondering what was taking him so long. She had been the one to start them on this path, but there was no way she was going to advance it now.

"If we..." He swallowed. _If _was not the appropriate word to be using here. "It's going to hurt you."

Her voice was affronted. Clearly this was not the response she had

expected. "I _know_ that. Do you really think I care? I want- I need this. I need you." She emphasized her words by taking his hand and pulling it toward herself, then seemed unsure of what to do with it. Her movements would have seemed awkward except that his palm came to rest in the sweeping curve of her waist as if it belonged there, and she placed her own hand symmetrically on him. "I need you," she repeated in a much smaller voice.

Rainwater still clung to her skin like perspiration, erasing the friction and creating the perfect surface for his hand to glide across her hip and down her thigh. There was still a chance to back off...but she had said she needed him. Need. The holy land had made a place for him. He followed the heat of her body to its source between her legs, and touched her there for the first time. His fingers slid between her lips, slick and fiery, and she made a sound that was somehow a moan and a whimper and a gasp all at once, and even so he could hear his name in it.

The chance to back off was gone. His only discernible thoughts at this point involved finding out what other sounds he could draw from her. He was gentle when he nudged her onto her back, and careful to be sure that she could see into his eyes when he raised himself over her, but in the back of his mind he was waiting for the smell of blood.

**iv. cower**

_it's not her can't be her. break it get away from it. more tricks not real nothing's real where where where what's real? last thing: fire. no. can't run, never helps, can't get away because everything's real. last thing: sword. over and over, now holding it at this end, now feeling it from the other, and _What's the matter, vampire? Isn't this what you wanted? Your plan, your portal, your woman. Go on, fuck her again, and this time you can keep her. You can keep fucking her for all eternity, if that's your idea of a party. She killed you. Return the favor. _and you'll do it, too. you really will. it's all you are. that's why you're here and you're meant to be here and you'll always be here and it's not them it's you. can't run can't fight but you know better than to believe their lies. they want. they want. they want you to think you got away but you never will. same world as the other, nothing's real everything's real. hungry. blood. they always let you kill. just hunt just feed just don't believe their lies. it can't be her. it's her it's her it's her. _

**v. tremble**

The demon thrashed as it fell, but it went motionless before he cut out its heart. He was similarly steady as he mixed the potion- a dead nervous system didn't tend to foster shaky hands. His posture didn't falter even when he stood at the door with just a blanket between himself and the searing sun, though he thought the foundation of the house might have reverberated a little with the force of his knock. When he put the potion to her lips, he tamped down his urgency and poured with controlled precision.

But when she saw him and heard his voice and didn't know him, he flinched. She did more than flinch. Something within her reacted to the medicine even while her mind was still elsewhere, and she flailed in his grasp, forcing him to hold her down. She was as strong as ever, though the frightened cries she was making showed that she didn't know what she was fighting, and soon he began to fear that she could seriously hurt herself despite his efforts.

_ "GILES!"_

She had the whole bed shaking along with her by the time the call was answered just seconds later. Giles and Joyce rushed into the bedroom and did what they could to help him restrain her, but the only kind of assistance that he really wanted was some assurance that this kind of reaction wasn't bad news. He asked Giles and it came out as an accusation.

"I don't know," the ex-Watcher snapped back at him. "I haven't dealt with this specific condition any more than you have."

"You don't _know?_ So it might not even be working?" The idea that the potion may have been no cure at all loomed suddenly in his mind. It might be worse than no cure. It might drive her over the edge. It might kill her. It was made from a _demon's _heart! What had they been _thinking?_

"The text was reliable and we've followed its instructions explicitly; this is the only cure that any of us have discovered; you are not the only person here who cares about the outcome; all we can do now is wait."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the patient stopped shaking, but she was still unconscious and there was still no recovery guaranteed. The others didn't stop him from kneeling beside her and taking her hand. They didn't make him talk. That was good- he thought it would turn out badly if he tried.

_I did what I was supposed to,_ he thought piteously, a prayer that cast no reflection. _I found the demon and I got the heart and I gave her the medicine. She's supposed to come back now. Please, please, give her back. _

She didn't move.

**vi. flee**

Joyce- _or Mrs. Summers? Someone should tell me which one I'm supposed to use_- looked ready to leave as soon as she had said her piece, but he coaxed her to sit down with him, just for a few minutes. Whatever his goal was, and he honestly wasn't sure if he had one, it was an exercise in futility. She met each of his carefully worded arguments with a firm shake of her head and a reiteration of her original points. Different worlds. Just a girl. Choices. There wasn't a lot of detail that needed to be covered, since she already knew he knew exactly what all of the problems were. She was only there to make him hear them from a voice aside from the one inside his own head.

He tried his best to be respectful to her. She was important, not to his life, but to the life that mattered more than his. He couldn't afford to be on bad terms with her. But the more he listened to her immovable stance, the more he threw himself against the iron defenses of motherhood, the more he felt the resentment creeping in. What did she really think she knew about this? She had a fraction of his age, none of his experience. She spoke to him as if he were a misguided teenager.

It crossed his mind to explain to her what she was really asking of him. That it wasn't just a breakup, and he wasn't just in love. If he was going to take Joyce's advice, she ought to know that he was sacrificing everything that had ever meant anything to him, essentially allowing his existence to cease. She ought to know that she was assisting him in his suicide. He looked at her and prepared to tell it as it was-

_I'll die without Buffy. She'll die without me._

She frowned as she saw the memory hit him, though he didn't tell her what had given him such a jolt. Whatever he had been about to say died on his lips. Of course he couldn't explain this to Joyce. No matter how fully he could make her understand his agony, it just wasn't relevant. She looked at him and saw what mattered to her as a mother- not Angel, not Angelus, not a misguided teenager, but simply a threat.

His resentment crystalized within him and dissolved into pure, familiar sorrow. He knew there was no malice in Joyce's intentions. She was a protector, like him, and she did what she had to do. For the first time, he let himself recognize her as an authority figure. Yes, he was older than she was, but how much of his life had really mattered before he loved Buffy? And this woman had been loving Buffy since before she even came into the world.

Without describing these revelations to Joyce, he managed to convey his acceptance of her wisdom, and she left shortly thereafter. He wanted to get out of the house himself, and he ended up pacing around it until the sun set. He would have to leave the house altogether, he realized. Without Buffy there was no home for him in Sunnydale. With every passing moment, the reality of it sunk in a little deeper. Leave. Leave her. He tried to concentrate on the idea of removing the threat, as a good protector should, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was her face in tears.

It was bad enough to have to do this to himself. But he had to make the choice because she couldn't, and that meant he was going to make her cry.

**vii. break**

He had been so afraid that he would succumb to the poison before she returned. He almost wanted to scold her, to ask where she had been and if he didn't deserve to just see her face one more time, but when she finally showed up she was, of course, beyond reprimand. The fear faded away, and the pain almost did too, and he got ready to say his goodbyes.

Then he learned what was really happening. The approaching peaceful death was snatched away from him, leaving a living nightmare with his innocent, loving, sweet girl as the mastermind.

And he knew what was coming next, because he'd been to Hell and these were the games they played with him; they made him kill her and they made him _love _it, only to pull back and realize what he had done, only to pull back again and find she had never been there to kill.

And he knew it was coming because it had happened on this world too, he had penetrated her body and turned into a monster- or was it the other way around?- and discovered that the true power of her unreasonably strong love for him was her own destruction.

And he knew it was coming because she was too strong for him. She always had been. Whatever she wanted from him now she was ultimately going to get, but he had to try to get away because this was just too much for him. He hauled himself out of bed and across the room, and even that much was more strength than he'd realized he had left in him, but it wasn't enough, there she was, ready to destroy both of them, and it was _just too much_.

Sheer bewilderment followed her first hit. Terrified comprehension at her second. When her final punch landed, everything fell away except for the thing created in fire, not man not beast not soul not demon, and then it was _love blood sex hunger Buffy Buffy Buffy Buffy…_

For the first time since the second time he had died, everything made perfect sense.


	2. Watch TV

**Title: **Watch TV

**Author: **Kairos

**Wordcount: **1226

**Rating: **PG

**Notes: **Written for the prompt "sitcom" and set in a sequel to my story "Let Me In", which was never written and probably never will be. I'm not too crazy about this scene, but since this is where most of those readers who asked for a sequel are, I thought it made sense to post it.

* * *

Cordelia glanced up from the magazine she was reading at the reception desk as Buffy stepped into the Hyperion. "Here it comes," she said blandly.

"Here what comes? Where's Angel?" Buffy's happy demeanor went through a rapid transmutation. "Is Angel not here? Is he seriously not present at this location during this moment when he _knew_ I was going to arrive? I don't believe this."

"Here that comes." Cordelia set the magazine down. "He'll be back in a jiffy. He said it was an emergency. Sacred duty? Protector of the innocent? Sound familiar?"

Buffy exhaled, crossed the room, and leaned down on Cordelia's desk. "Yeah, I know. It's just, this is our first weekend together in LA since you guys got back from that Piewheel world, and I didn't want to spend any of it with the not having him here." She risked a glare at the other girl. "And you told me he would be here. You owe me one vampire husband."

"When the shipment comes in you'll be the first to know." Cordelia was impassive in the face of the accusation, a marked improvement from the days when Buffy was simply a competitor in her eyes. "Want to watch TV?"

Buffy led the way upstairs to the suite she officially, though rarely in practice, shared with Angel. "Aren't you supposed to be working?" she commented as they settled in the living room area.

Cordelia shrugged. "I can hear the phone ring from here. You know, Buffy, I'm really glad you and Angel got married. There's no other way he ever would have broke down and bought a television. A woman's manipulation is exactly what his lifestyle was lacking."

"I'm not really manipulating. I got him figured out is all. He likes watching movies and stuff, he just doesn't want to admit it. Sort of like the singing thing."

"Ooh!" said Cordelia. "_Friends_ is on!"

Half an episode later, the door opened behind them, and Cordelia stood up and announced loudly, "Well, I better be heading downstairs to wait for the phone to ring! Any other kind of trouble happening in this building is completely not my business."

Buffy waited for the sound of the door clicking shut behind her, but didn't say anything or look up from the TV. Soon there was a presence looming behind her, and then Angel tentatively cleared his throat.

"Hello dear," said Buffy evenly.

"Sorry I'm late…"

"No big. I've been quite occupied. I'm watching _Friends_. It's a complex and intriguing show, full of social commentary and spontaneous hilarity. In fact, I think you should wait for a commercial break before trying to talk to me."

Angel sighed, but didn't come around from behind the couch. What did he think he was going to do, make her turn around first? "Buffy," he complained.

"Shh," she warned him. "I think Chandler's about to do something zany."

"You're giving me the cold shoulder, is that it?"

Buffy pointed at the screen. "Ha ha ha! Boy, that was some well-placed sarcasm!"

That remark effectively brought him to his breaking point: "This show is the _worst_ example of performance media that the modern world has to offer! It's crass and the jokes aren't funny and the characters make terrible role models! Why would anybody want to watch this trash?"

"Maybe because they're sulky because their spouses left them alone without leaving a note or an explanation with Cordy or anything."

Silence was his only answer: oh dammit, he was going to wait her out. He _always_ won when he employed that tactic. Maybe it was time to lay out some argumentative ground rules.

However, this time he was the first to speak, and it was after letting very little time pass. "You're going to make us late."

She caught herself just before turning around to look at him. Playing on her curiosity, now, that was crafty too. Resolutely she kept her eyes forward. "Late for what?"

"Nothing. Sorry I interrupted your show. Maybe I should give it a chance. I'm just set in my ways, you know, used to live theatre. Anyway, I better go see if I can scalp these…"

Buffy forgot what she was holding out for and turned around to look up at his mischievously twinkling brown eyes. "Scalp what for the who now?" she said before noticing the pair of tickets in his hand. "Live theatre? We're going out?"

"Anything to get that TV turned off," said Angel, but he smiled and brought his other hand out from behind his back. He had a red rose, that sneaky devil, and a…menu?

She squirmed around further to get a closer look. "Bella Cucina? Did you get a reservation there? That's like, where classy people go!"

"Well, it's our first weekend here since I came back from Pylea, and I wanted to do something special." He looked suddenly worried. "Do you want to? Maybe I should have asked first, but I realized I didn't have any presents ready for you, and I…I kind of panicked."

"And you ran out at the last minute to go plan a romantic evening." Buffy plucked the rose out of his hand and hitched her arms around his waist, laughing into his chest. "Alright, you win. This time we'll go with your plan. Only because I happen to have a classy dress with me. And because I missed you."

He gestured at the TV, still prattling on behind her. "More than you'll miss Chandler?"

"It's a rerun. Bring on the guilt-induced date with my number one man. I'm getting manicotti. You're getting…hm. Can't tell what has garlic in it. What kind of play is this? Is there singing? Do I have time to change my hairstyle?"

At some point during the conversation, Angel had dropped the menu and tickets and filled his hands with her instead. They wandered over her back and arms, slid beneath her shirt, and moved up to play with her hair, pressing her closer to him in an almost incidental way. Buffy thought fleetingly of abandoning the newly made plans and replacing them with activities fit for taking place right here in the suite, but she sensed a fervid need in Angel's embrace that really wasn't sexual. "You okay?" she said softly as his cheek slid across her face.

"Just glad to be home," he murmured.

She chuckled. "You never learn to appreciate your own dimension until you've spent some time in one with head-explody collars on all the humans, huh?"

He pulled his face back to look at her and said, "That's not what I meant."

She knew exactly what he had meant. She fumbled to reach the remote control and turn off the TV without letting go of him—it wouldn't do to leave the house without getting in one good solid kiss first, and Chandler wasn't invited.

Angel's tongue rediscovered her mouth as his hands had her body, and before she knew it, she had climbed over the back of the couch and was hanging onto him with all four limbs. She was glad to be home, too.


	3. My Lady D'Arbanville

**Title: **My Lady D'Arbanville

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG-13, but dark in theme.

**Notes: **Written for Leni's B/A Lyrics Wheel some time ago. My prompt was a Cat Stevens song which also gave me the title of the fic. This is sort of my first Buffy/Angelus.

* * *

He knew he was biased. He had adored her from the very first moment he saw her, watched her mature from a naïve child to a dangerous woman, lost his soul to her bare love. Before she came into his life he had never known that the loveliness of a female could touch so much more than his body; after they were parted, he had never even attempted to find her equal in another. He was hers. She was his. No effect of time or change could ever diminish her beauty in his eyes.

Still, Angelus thought, even an impartial observer would have to admit that Buffy made quite an attractive corpse.

He had dressed her for the occasion in a long silk dress, and arranged her on his bed in a pose she had been prone to taking in her sleep. He himself sat beside her, toying with her hair and examining her features, unwilling to release her to the traditional burial that her people would have wanted for her. Tradition be damned; he had waited a long time for this, and he wasn't going to miss any minute of it.

Drusilla would have laughed if she saw him now. Darla would have hidden her jealousy with haughtiness. Vampires as a rule had little use for a dead body unless it was a food source—the practice of burying the body of a human who had just been sired had as much to do with practicality as ritual. It was easier to make the neonate crawl his way out of the grave than it was to sit around waiting for him to wake up. Angelus, as far as he knew, was unique in his fascination with his new progeny, but that was because he was careful about selecting them. Anyone could sire a vampire; only he would be the one to sire Buffy Summers.

Moonlight struck her jaw line and spilled down her neck, and he rearranged a lock of her hair to better reflect it. She looked so perfect and peaceful that he kept expecting her to sigh or stretch out a limb, maybe to wake and yawn, maybe to fall into a deeper sleep. Despite his clear memory of bringing her here with every conscious intention of it, despite the smell of death about her and the silence of her lungs and heart, despite the hour or more that he had been watching her without any sign of movement, his eyes could still deceive him. It was all to the best, he thought. If she could enthrall him this much in her lifeless state, there was no telling what an eternity with them together could hold.

"Why do you sleep so still?" he murmured, and then, enjoying the illusion that she could hear him, continued to speak to her. "I couldn't believe I caught you that way, you know. I thought you must have known by now. It's been six months, Buff. I left Los Angeles as soon as it happened, but I wasn't exactly laying low." He chuckled. "I went on a road trip. No particular reason, I just needed to relax after finally getting rid of that damnable soul again, and the first thing that came to mind was being the first vampire to kill someone in every state of the continental US. Well, I got to thirty-four. Once I got into the Deep South, everyone started to taste the same. Just wasn't worth it.

"I wish you had been there. I'll tell you all about it one day." Buffy, of course, had no response, but Angelus shook his head ruefully as he remembered. "You must have heard reports. There were enough survivors to get some kind of physical description of me, and after you hadn't heard from me in so long…it's not that complicated, Buff. I almost started sending you postcards with hints, but I'm glad I didn't. Things worked out just fine this way, didn't they?"

He touched her cheek, smooth cold skin beneath his smooth cold fingertips. Just as she had been giving the false impression of life, now he could almost imagine that her expressionless face had taken on a tinge of regret. "Don't worry," he soothed her. "We'll laugh about this someday."

She hadn't been laughing when she saw him. She was deeply distraught and he had sensed it from a distance and knew instantly that this was the perfect opportunity, possibly the only one he would ever get, to make her his forever. For just a few more minutes he watched her listless meandering through the graveyard, twiddling her stake and rubbing her bare arms as if she didn't have the sense to put on a jacket when she went out on a cool night. Then he stepped out from the shadows of the trees along the border, and was rewarded by the most emotional, tearful look of recognition that she had ever given him. He had made her vulnerable to him long ago and quite by accident; finding her at a low point already was an additional stroke of luck. He supposed it should hardly be a surprise that she had failed to understand who she was truly seeing.

There had followed a long embrace, and what Buffy probably thought was a heartwarming reunion scene. She might not have even realized that her words harked back to another reunion, one that mirrored this precisely if she had only known it. "Where were you? I was so worried. You just disappeared!"

Once again, she was full of fear and doubt and bruised love, and he savored it just as much as he had the first time. This time, though, instead of adding to her slow torment, he was ready for her with the answers she wanted. He held her and didn't let go as he piled on the apologies and the vague lies about where he had been and how much he had wanted to come back to her. Gradually she relaxed in his grip and began to tell him what she had been through while he was gone.

It was a lot, he had to give her that. There were even a few persistent troubles that he would have to take care of now that the Scooby Gang was about to be deprived of its leading member. He listened for as long as he thought was needed to get the full rundown of the town's situation, and then he turned her attention back to himself.

Nonverbal interruptions were a special trick he had, with or without a soul, although Angel was less willing to manipulate anyone even in that small way. He had been watching Buffy's face intently; now he dropped his eyes and took a tiny step back while she was in the middle of a run-on sentence. She noticed immediately. "What is it? Are you okay?"

He made himself sound ashamed. "Yeah, I just…I came as fast as I could, and…I'm so hungry, Buffy. I need to get to a butcher's."

She had the idea herself, of course—or she thought she did, which was all he needed. For a few seconds she stared up at him with those deep, trusting green eyes, and then she was offering him her neck in such a deliberate way that words were needless. It was hard to force himself to hesitate the way that Angel would have, but she was so determined to provide for him that he didn't have to hesitate for long. With a thrill he had seldom felt, dead or alive, he bit down on her scar.

Plan B had been to fight her, but if he had won, he wouldn't have celebrated by draining her. Making a new vampire was an art form, and with a personality as strong as Buffy's, the timing had to be exact. If she died while raging at him, the rage would still be there when she woke with no soul. Turning her love for him against her would leave some variables, to be sure, but it was very unlikely that she would retain enough animosity toward him to ruin their relationship. She had barely even had the chance to realize that he was taking too much blood before she started to lose consciousness, the poor fool girl.

He smiled down at her, pretending that her visage was now reflecting the innocence that she had never successfully lost. Suddenly noticing that he might not have much time left, he reached into a drawer beside the bed and pulled out some drawing supplies. Buffy's rebirth had to be recorded, especially when she was looking so beautiful.

It was near dawn when her eyes fluttered open and her head turned to face him. "Angel?" she said faintly. It was the exact same tone she had used to greet him in the graveyard. His heart soared with the new certainty that everything he loved about her would be preserved for eternity.

"You bit me," she said. She touched her neck, looked at her fingers, and then returned her gaze to him. "You made me a vampire." There was no accusation in the words, only wonder.

He nodded. "This time, my love, when I say I'll stay with you forever…"

"Forever. I'm immortal. I'm gonna live forever."

Angelus couldn't hide his excitement. He grinned broadly. "That's right. Are you hungry, Buff? We're still near your home. We've got Dawn, Willow, Xander…who do you want to kill?"

Her only response was to turn away from him and sit up straight, her legs hanging off the side of the bed. He leaned back against the cushions and waited. She would want him as soon as she began to adjust to unlife.

Buffy stood up and took a few paces across the room, and when she whirled around again, the vulnerability of her last incarnation was gone. "You tricked me. You murdered—you let me murder myself!" Without warning she reached out to the closest piece of furniture, a heavy wooden wardrobe, and lifted it off the floor and almost over her head. Angelus jumped as it came crashing down into splinters and heaps of clothing. "You TRICKED me!"

It was just a streak of madness, he told himself grimly as he made his way across the room to her, a temporary phase of disorientation. Some called it 'siring sickness'. All he had to do was restrain her until it passed.

No sooner had he laid a hand on her than she was grappling him to the ground with a strength that surpassed that of any Slayer or any vampire he had ever known. When he was on his back in the wreckage of the wardrobe and she reached for a pointed wooden shard, he suddenly knew exactly how she had felt when she told him to let go and he started sucking harder. He grabbed her wrist, but she was already kneeling over him with his other hand pinned under hers, and the stake was inching toward his heart.

A tear fell onto his face. "I held onto mine," she whispered. "I felt it being ripped out of me but I wouldn't let it go. Why couldn't you hold onto yours?"


	4. Wake Up and Live

**Title: **Wake Up (From a Deep Sleep) and Live (Happily Ever After)

**Rating: **General

**Disclaimer: **Not my stuff.

**Summary: **Written in defense of Buffy's line "When you kiss me, I want to die." This examines her feelings about Angel during early Season 2.

* * *

Buffy had been thinking about kissing Angel a lot. During the time between the night his secret had been revealed and the day she had left Sunnydale for the summer, they had kissed four more times. She knew he remembered each one because Angel didn't forget things. She remembered each one herself because she didn't forget things like kisses.

She wasn't counting, though. Each kiss felt too new to be listed among any comparable experience, and every time it happened, she could never figure out exactly how they had gotten to that point. Figuring out what it meant wasn't even on the agenda. Osculation was just a phenomenon that occasionally occurred between her and Angel.

It took a long time for the phenomenon to occur again after she returned for the new school year, but that wasn't a surprise. After all, she had started out by denying that they had any kind of relationship to rebuild, and once that ruse was dropped, they had to rebuild it without defining it. There wasn't an advice column in the world that offered any guidance for a mess like this.

One night she began her patrol and found him waiting at the gate of the cemetery, smiling for no reason at all. They held hands and talked about the summer as they walked. She wasn't angry and he wasn't jealous. It was enough.

†

Buffy had been thinking about kissing Angel a little too much. Part of it, of course, was that there were progressively more memories of past kisses for her to dwell on. Unfortunately, that was leading to more and more anticipation of future kisses. Sooner or later it might even lead to wondering where the hell this pattern was going to lead them.

Logically there was nothing wrong with taking an occasional dip into the pool of physical affection. She was currently single, he was currently…well, probably _eternally_ single, and once she started dating again, she would totally discontinue all tongue-related activities with Angel and Angel would totally understand. He had even told her that he would understand. He had _said words_ about how she was free to pursue a relationship with someone else, and from him that was downright significant.

Not to mention that he had a whole arsenal of nonverbal ways to reinforce that message. The guilty way he hung his head after releasing her lips was not exactly what she considered icing on her cake, and if he thought she didn't notice that he never stuck around much longer after the night had reached that point, he was one dunce of a vampire.

One night she told him exactly that, and he stopped and turned, apparently trying to find a response or an excuse to not give one. "It's just better this way," he said finally. "We need to stop doing that. You should be concentrating on…other things. Other_ people._" He was gone before she could even choose which part of that to scream at him for first.

†

Buffy had been thinking about kissing Angel way too much. It was interfering with her homework. Here she was putting honest effort into conjugating French verbs, and for once the explanation she gave to her mother about spending the evening studying at Willow's house was actually the truth, and the only thing that was holding her attention at all was Angel and the stupid frowny-face he made whenever she tried to get him to have fun.

His latest little pearl of wisdom was that they had to do the mature thing and keep their relationship platonic. She hadn't been able to effectively argue because all she had been able to think about was that this probably meant that she wasn't getting any kissing tonight. Somehow she didn't think that saying so would make her sound as grown-up as he was suggesting she be.

"You know, that's all fine for _him_," she said out loud, closing her French book for indignant emphasis. "He's _supposed_ to be mature. He's _old._"

Willow looked confused. "Well, yeah, but Buffy, he's only trying to help you."

"Oh, sure he is! Trying to help me by hovering around me when I'm trying to slay, and then all of a sudden, wait, it's time for a heart-stopping moonlit make-out session, and then I'm supposed to just go back to—"

"_What?_ Did you just say _make-out session_?"

Buffy arched an eyebrow, wondering where her friend had acquired the sudden sense of propriety. "Come on, Will, you know it wasn't just that one time. Angel keeps—"

"Oh! I thought we were talking about Giles. Well that's different."

It was just as well that they never returned to the subject after they both managed to stop laughing. Willow was always ready to lend an ear, but it wasn't really fair to make her keep listening to complaints about Angel; her own romantic troubles were so much different. As far as forbidden love was concerned, Buffy was on her own.

One night she deliberately misinformed him about which route she would be taking on her patrol and made the rounds by herself. When he found her just before she finished, she shrugged and made sounds about it being too bad that they had missed each other, pretending not to notice that he clearly wasn't buying it. The hurt in his eyes stayed with her until she fell asleep.

†

Buffy had been dreaming about kissing Angel. Apparently, cutting down on the real-world incidents of it only threw her subconscious into high gear. Also, she was mortified to find that dreams almost never stopped at kissing, even if the thoughts of her waking life had been completely chaste all day. Her subconscious just had no shame.

The only way she was going to get through this, she decided, was by exercising her right to date. At this point in her life it was the natural thing to do, anyway. Providing she could properly balance dating with Slaying, Giles would tolerate it. Her friends and mother expected it. Angel practically _encouraged_ it.

As for herself, she wanted it. She was young and pretty and as socially active as conditions would allow, and she wanted a boyfriend. How to go about getting one? She drew the line at settling; it wouldn't be any fun if she didn't care about the guy. And she wasn't going to use Xander like that, even if he begged her to. She just had to keep her eyes open and someone would come along and put her mind—and her dreams—on the right track .

So she went to school and talked to the boys there and thought about how Angel was smarter and kinder than all of them. She paged through magazines and looked at the celebrities there and thought about how Angel was hotter than all of them. And then she walked through cemeteries and noted the dates commemorating the dead there and thought about how Angel was older than all of them.

One night she forgot that she was attempting to play cool around him, and ended up spilling her guts about every insignificant problem that was currently infesting her life. When she found herself standing too close to him, she put out her hand, intending to push him away. Instead, she found herself suddenly clasped in his arms with his mouth pressed against hers. It could be the last time, she reasoned, so she might as well enjoy it. It could be the last time, she realized, and tears began welling in her eyes.

†

Buffy had stopped trying to stop thinking about kissing Angel. So maybe she wouldn't be able to get into a real relationship while he was around, fine. So maybe this was all just her latest effort to distract herself from reality.

One night soon it might cease to matter. She might make the wrong move, stab when she should be blocking, meet a demon who was more than her match. Angel would find her body and reverently lift her into his arms. Maybe he would whisper an apology. But just this once, when he kissed her for the last time, there would be no guilt.


	5. Complicated

**Author's Note: **This is very old. Someone gave me the prompt "moose" and I took it in a rather unorthodox direction. I also made use of an epic-length fanfic I've been working on for years now as the setting. It might not altogether make sense, and I actually like it more for the character used in the flashback than for the B/A part, but I didn't see a reason not to share it. Rating for this one is general, though it does get a bit gory.

* * *

"It's so beautiful out here." Buffy looked around the woods and up at the moonlit treetops. She had a city girl's appreciation of the wilderness, having grown up in the frantic sprawl of Los Angeles as it once was. Sunnydale had been flanked by moderate forests, but the difference here was vast. She inhaled deeply. "Smells good, too. All fresh and green. Like salad, but without the chewing."

What she was smelling, Angel thought, was the absence of car fumes and concrete and human sweat, so typical to her old life that she had ceased to notice them. He was glad she was enjoying the comparatively fresh air of the woods, but the aroma in his own nostrils that evening was telling him something entirely different. He grimaced. She was breathing in blood and decay and she didn't know it. That just didn't seem right.

"What?" she asked, peering at his face suspiciously as they walked.

He blinked. He hadn't remembered her being this adept at reading him, especially in the dark. Or maybe it only came as a surprise because he had just been thinking about her lack of enhanced senses. "I smell something," he admitted.

"A hydrogen demon?"

"Hydra," he corrected absently. "And no, I think it's…" He sniffed again, feeling self-conscious. "It's a moose."

Buffy looked nonplussed. "You have moose up here?"

He nodded. "They're pretty common, actually. The girls tell me they graze in the yard sometimes in the morning. You'll probably see one or two before you…" He winced. Neither of them wanted to hear the end of that sentence.

"Wow," she said, somewhat forcefully. "Here I was getting all excited about the birds and squirrels." It was obvious that she was trying to keep the tone light, and he was grateful for her efforts—until she went on to say, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

He emitted a short laugh. "You ask permission for that now?"

"Fine." She shot him a glare. "I'm going to ask you a personal question. You've got all these ginormous mammals roaming around, and all this space"—she waved a arm to indicate the expansive forest surrounding them—"to let you keep your secrets, so why don't you hunt for your food? Wouldn't it be a lot less complicated?"

It would have been easier to just answer with a 'no.' She would have let him, too, as a token of respect for his wish to keep certain old truths neatly contained. But if she had asked, it meant she wanted explanation, and shutting her out didn't come so naturally anymore. Not now, when she had so little of her own life left to her. The least he could do was share his.

He had stationed himself in the Green Mountains years ago, but there had been plenty of time beforehand, between Buffy's departure and the establishment of his school here, for traveling. His destinations had been varied, usually focused on business rather than pleasure, but when an old friend resurfaced—in Yellowstone of all places—he had seen nothing keeping him from paying a visit. It wasn't meant to be a vacation so much as a chance to catch up and compare notes on the good fight, but Angel was sure that his rediscovery of the world outside of civilization had hinged on that time.

Oz had carved out a good life for himself, finally accepting the necessity of getting a job and managing to find one that let him work from home. He was single, as far as Angel heard, but he spoke casually of a number of friends he had in the area and even shared his house with some of them. Most impressively, he had mastered his lycanthropy to the point of almost complete control, far greater than any other werewolf that Angel had known.

There was little perceptible change in Oz's calm temper and persistent sense of humor, but Angel noted a certain passion in his attachment to the woodlands of his new home, and wondered if the wolf within had brought it about. It took a few days for either of them to suggest it, but it was almost inevitable that they would take the opportunity to go out hunting together. Oz no longer depended on the lunar cycle to bring about his transformation, but they chose a night with a full moon anyway, and set out sometime past midnight with the illumination casting shadows over shaggy fur and black clothing.

Angel was equipped with only a small lockback knife, and he let Oz lead the way, ranging out in front of him like a bloodhound. They were on a hot trail in almost no time—an elk, Angel learned later, though at the time he didn't know his fauna well enough to identify the scent that accurately. The closer they got to it, the more his excitement heightened, and Oz's animal intensity was a clear demonstration of the thrill of the chase. The experience was not entirely unlike the days when he and Darla had used teamwork to corner their prey, always taking the time to cultivate some fear before dispatching it, and though that thought alone should have made him step back and review his motives, it didn't.

The wolf stopped cold just before the elk came into visibility, and the two hunters exchanged a glance before Angel nodded and posed for a sprint. They had come this far with barely a sound from either of them, and the silence was broken now only by the rapid tread of paws for a few seconds and then the whoosh of air as Oz made his leap.

There were a few impressions of the kill that Angel retained and mused on later: that the animal was an adult bull, bigger than some horses he had ridden; that his hands were at some point fastened on its antlers so it couldn't escape; that the wolf showed no sign of knowing or caring when it was dead; that his little knife remained in his pocket the entire time. But mostly he remembered the scent of warm blood, and the easy flow of it in his throat as he once again fed on a living creature, _at last._

He finished first and left Oz tearing at the dead elk's stomach. Things were no different between them the next day than they had been previously, but no mention of that night was ever made again, and it was the last time Oz used his wolf form for hunting while Angel was with him. Angel stayed for another two weeks and had no regrets about making the visit.

Nor did he have any concerns about the way his werewolf friend handled his condition. Oz's Mr. Hyde had a bestial shape to go with it, and he had learned to safely use the transformation as an outlet for the changes it had made to his inner self. Angel could make no such distinction between his opposed drives. When he killed, it was his own true being who killed, and for all his years of battling the urge, he was still learning about it.

These days, things were more peaceful inside his head than they had been for a long, long time, and having Buffy nearby again was no small part of that. It didn't make it any easier for him to confess the tenuous balance he still held, though, or the choices he had made to ensure that he remained Dr. Jekyll at all times. He had been silent for too long, he knew, and she was still waiting for him to answer her question, but she said nothing to urge him on. She knew him, probably much better than she realized, but the only way she was going to understand exactly why hunting his own food was so complicated was if he killed her and let her body be taken over by a demon.

"Hunting isn't very good for me," he replied finally. It was far too vague, but he couldn't tell her the story about Oz, or her thoughts would have strayed to Nina in no time. She had become frustratingly insecure about his former girlfriends, always fixating on some trait of theirs that she couldn't match, and it didn't do any good to assure her that he never wanted her to be anything but human. "And it's a bad idea to leave animal carcasses around here," he added. "They attract the hydras."

"Oh." For a moment there was no sound but their footfalls in the dead leaves padding the ground. "Are we going to see any tonight, do you think? I'm really itching to get my slay on."

"You miss the vampires?" he teased.

She gave him a playful shove. "Probably about as much as they missed me."

He juggled the possible meanings that answer could have and liked all of them. More serious matters loomed, though, and he quickly brought himself back to business. "We should probably take a look at that moose," he said reluctantly. "It might have been killed by a hydra."

"What moose?" she started to ask, then switched to a reproachful tone and said, "You didn't tell me it was a dead one."

"Sorry." He shrugged, and in the middle of it his arm lifted up to point the way. They had already been heading toward the moose, and it was close now. He didn't really want to see it, and he didn't want Buffy to see it. If it was the work of a hydra demon—and he was fairly certain that it was—it would be dismembered and splattered across the foliage, fifty feet in every direction. And then, of course, there would be a hunt. That's why they were out there, after all.

"Onwards," said Buffy. "Let's have a little funeral for Bullwinkle. And then seek vengeance on his killer." She sounded chipper. He had to remind himself that this was her life's work, and she would be the last woman in the world to get squeamish about a mangled corpse.

Still, he wished this could have remained as it began: a moonlit walk in a beautiful forest. For once he allowed himself to get a little angry about the unfair hands that had been dealt to Buffy and himself, and he channeled it willingly into anger at the hydras, and the damned portal that kept spawning them, and the damned animals they kept leaving strewn about his terrain.

Why did everyone have such complicated eating habits?


	6. Armed and Dangerous

**Title: **Armed and Dangerous

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **This is set sometime after "Let Me In"; it was meant to be part of a sequel but that didn't get written, so it's floating in a bit of a void.

* * *

She knew better than to underestimate them because they were human — these guys were serious, and if they were nothing more than common criminals, well, they were still _armed_ criminals. Defeating them would take a little less brute force and a little more life-sparing finesse, but that didn't mean she was going to let her guard down.

But somehow she underestimated them anyway. She had seen that they were carrying guns, but she had never honestly expected either one to fire. Not without a warning. Not without being attacked first.

There was no dead end to mark the end of the pursuit, nothing but the mouth of another long alley, but it was there that one of the two men turned and fired every round in his pistol. Then he kept running. His goal had been achieved; nobody was following him and his partner anymore.

Buffy felt the white-hot sting of the first bullet over her breast, but before her mind could choose fear or anger, the rest of the shots were echoing in her eardrums and none of them had reached her. She was suddenly behind Angel, who was groaning in pain and lowering his arms from where they had been protecting his face, and yet she recalled with perfect clarity that he had been at least ten feet away when the gunman raised his weapon.

Angel didn't so much as glance down the alley; his wild eyes fell first on her face and then her shoulder. While her own eyes were busy taking in the pattern of red blotches his chest had just gained, he reached for her and took her balance so that she had to lean on him as he lowered her down with him to the ground. Without speaking he seized the fabric of her shirt with both hands and ripped it away from the spot that the bullet had penetrated. It was right beneath her collarbone, far from any crucial organs but still fiery with pain, and he showed no hesitation before lowering his face and setting his mouth on it.

The suction that she felt at the wound had such force that her whole body would have been pulled along with it if he hadn't been holding her steady. She only had a few seconds to marvel at how she could feel the movement within her before something small and hard passed from her skin and the pain subsided. Angel pulled his face back and swallowed, then spat a clean bullet into his hand. "Let's go," he said as his fist closed around the offending object.

She scrambled to her feet, refusing to let him even try to help her up, and waved helplessly at his damaged chest. "But you…"

"I can walk. There might be more coming. Come on."

They made it back to the Hyperion without incident, but Buffy was still hurting from the single bullet she had taken, and she couldn't imagine how he must be feeling with five. As soon as they had staggered inside, she sat him down on the couch and ran for the medical supplies.

He had stripped to the waist when she got back to him, and she ran a hand lightly down his chest, finding each point of entry. Every one of the shots had remained lodged in his body, and what was worse, the mouthful of her blood that he had taken earlier had accelerated his already fast healing process. Now the skin had closed over each bullet, leaving only a scar or a hard bulge. Buffy cringed. There was no way around it; the bullets _had_ to come out.

With trembling hands she reached for the surgical knife, but when she tried to begin sterilizing it, Angel stopped her with a hand on her wrist. "Don't bother with that."

Of course. He couldn't get infected that way. Still, he was usually so hygienic that his hurry to go on without that step must have meant he was in a lot of pain. He met her eyes for the briefest second and then took the knife from her and handed her a pair of forceps. Without any need for discussion, he turned the blade on his own body and cut a slit over one of the bulges, which instantly began to ooze blood. Buffy held her breath and put her own tool to work, digging into the newly opened wound until the forceps clasped onto her little metal enemy. Angel was cutting into another spot almost as soon as the bullet dropped into the medical kit's metal tray with a tiny clink.

The first one turned out to be the easiest. The others were in deeper, one so much that she could neither see it nor reach it. By that point Angel was emitting a steady growl, an animalistic sound that she heard rarely from him, and his face, while still human, was drawn into a strained grimace. Buffy put down the forceps and reached into the wound with her bare fingers. This way would hurt him even more, she knew, but they both wanted this over and his flesh had become her territory as much as her own was.

Indeed, he gasped as her thumb and forefinger disappeared beneath his ribcage, but indeed, she felt the bullet almost immediately and channeled all of her Slayer's dexterity into maneuvering it out. When it had joined the others in the metal tray, Buffy glared at it for a few seconds and then just slumped beside Angel, panting along with him. He was a canvas for blood, his chest like a crime scene, but he was cleansed. There were no more foreign objects trespassing on her territory.

It didn't take long for him to direct his attention once again to the single wound just under her collarbone — the left side, fortunately, or she would have had a much harder time wielding the forceps. "I know," she said as he reached out to caress her shoulder. "Needs bandages. You first, though."

Washing and covering their wounds was a messy ordeal which left smears of blood on the floor and furniture, but neither of them made any move to put things back in order afterward. The medical kit was still open and its contents still bloody and strewn about when they went upstairs to the suite, leaning on each other in the elevator and staggering arm-in-arm down the hall.

Buffy managed to peel off her ruined clothing and help Angel out of his pants before they both went horizontal on the bed, but she had no illusions about summoning enough energy to get them into the shower first. Fine, so they would ruin the sheets. Worse than that was seeing him there, looking so beat up and worn out, and she knew she looked no better to him.

The only way to evade that problem was to close her eyes, but first she propped herself up on an elbow and looked him over one last time. He would be okay, she knew, but she couldn't cuddle up to his chest as she usually did, for fear of hurting him. For a moment she hovered over him in indecision, and he opened up one eye and then slid his arm beneath her and pulled her down onto him, hugging her tightly without regard for his injuries.

Her frayed nerves finally reached a breaking point as she held her lover, and she released one long shuddering sob. She hated it that their time together had to be this instead of Sunday picnics and making love on the beach. She hated it that ordinary humans could get the best of them and escape without consequences on top of it. She hated it that Angel had been too fast for her to stop him from taking the bullets for her, and she hated it that she would have let him anyway because she knew he could survive what she couldn't.

"Buffy," he whispered, a plea for permission to calm her down, but the misery she felt was too evenly distributed between them to use his support as a way out of it. She wanted him right where he was, but she wanted him unharmed, safe.

"I hate guns," she answered, and kept on crying.


	7. Builder

**Title: **Builder

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **G

**Notes: **Supplementary story for IWRY one year. Family fluff set in the Joy'verse.

* * *

"Okay," said Angel to the girl sitting on the step. The instruments he needed were all around him, each one carefully selected at her prompt. "I'm ready. Read me the next one."

She pointed to the difficult words in the book as she said them out loud. "Sand...corners...of, each, um...puh..."

"Sound it out," he urged her. "P, then what?"

"Puhhh...lank. Plank!" Katie looked up proudly.

Angel checked the page and then gave her a low-speed high-five. "Great! You are the best assistant I have ever had. Now, turn the page and I'll show you something cool." She complied, and he pointed out the illustration filling up half the page. "That's what it's going to look like when it's finished."

Katie's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Just like that. Only we can paint ours in whatever colors we want. So, why don't you go talk to Joy about it inside?"

"But I'm helping!"

Angel nodded. "You've been lots and lots of help already. For the next part I need to use saws and hammers, though, and you're not allowed to be around those until you're thirty. Come on, playhouse colors! You're on a mission!"

As his daughter scurried back to the house, Angel circled the table slowly, staring at his tools and the instruction manual. This couldn't be that hard. He had everything he needed. He wasn't on a deadline, unless you counted Katie's birthday, because of course she would want to show the playhouse to her friends when they came for the party. And that was a whole three weeks away. Of course, he would want to give the paint a week to dry, and they might not be able to paint it right away, and - Angel shook his head fiercely. He was _not_ going to take any discouragement about this.

Two hours later he was in the kitchen with Buffy rubbing balm onto his thumb. "Relax," she was saying. "In a few minutes you won't even feel it."

"I'm not worried about my _hand_," he complained. "The hand's fine. The playhouse foundation is going to take forever to redo. If I can even fix it. What if I have to get more lumber? I can't believe this."

Buffy frowned. "Are you sure it's that bad?"

He turned and stalked around the kitchen. "Yes, it's that bad. The alignment of the entire thing is skewed. I must have used the wrong measurements. Gah, I can see it from the window!"

She sighed and tried again. "Maybe you should call Xander.."

"I am _not_ calling Xander!"

Buffy abandoned her attempts at reasoning and went for an old surefire win, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist. "Can you at least take a break?" she asked, leaning her head against his back. "It's going to get dark soon anyway. You're not that obsessed yet, are you?"

He chuckled softly. "No, I can call it quits for today. I should get dinner started. I hope the chicken is done defrosting." Imbued with a purpose once again, he opened the refrigerator and began poking around.

Recognizing the futility of offering help when he was in a mood like this, Buffy sat down at the table and looked out the window at the rectangle of wood on the grass. "Are you sure this is how you want to do things? You've been kind of frenetic lately."

Angel glanced up from the pile of vegetables he was setting on the counter. "Frenetic?"

"Yeah, it's a polite word for google-eyed crazy."

"I've been fine. This is exactly what I want. Always have."

She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. "It's just, you've only been stay-at-home dad for like, two days, and you're already overloading yourself with projects. I can cook sometimes, you know. I could also probably put together that -" she glanced at his stony expression and instantly decided to backtrack "- nobody could put together that playhouse like you can, nuh-uh, not a chance."

Angel left the vegetables to face her. "It's a big opportunity," he said. "I want to use my time well."

"So it's a guilt thing? You don't deserve the time you've got if you're not using every bit of it for the benefit of someone else?"

He frowned. "You and Joy and Katie aren't 'someone else'. You're my family."

"Yeah," she said with a tired smile. "And you would happily work yourself to the grave for us. I'm just asking you for my own sake to not do that, okay?"

"Don't worry about it, Buffy. I'm having fun. And if it's this good now, just wait until my victory over basic carpentry." He turned back to the counter and washed his hands, then shook them off, looking around for a dish towel. "I should get an apron. Don't you think?"

Buffy snickered. "You could go shopping for one tomorrow. Sounds like fun."

Angel shook his head disdainfully as he selected a chopping knife. "That would conflict with Katie's private tutoring in Latin."

"You're teaching her _Latin?_"

"She asked me to!"

Buffy flopped forward onto the table, face in her arms. "Commencing countdown," she mumbled. "How long is it going to take before I start insisting you get a job?"


	8. Copper Sunrise

**Title: **Copper Sunrise

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG

**Notes: **Another IWRY backup. This one is set in the time between Whistler showing Buffy to Angel, and their actual meeting.

* * *

Angelus stepped in front of the glass doors. _I'm not Angelus. I can't be Angelus._ The doors opened, sliding into slots in the walls as if they were a pair of servants obeying his mental cues. _I'm not ready for this._

Nobody was looking at him funny, though. He supposed the shower and the haircut and the new clothes had done their job: he not only looked like a human, but like a human with a home and a job and a life. _None of which is true. Well, maybe the job, but I seem to recall that jobs pay money._

He heard an irritated clucking, and a stout middle-aged woman brushed past him. He was still standing just inside the glass doors, he realized, and he hastily stepped aside and began to walk as if he had a purpose. Another moment to steady himself would have been a help. After facing any number of sewers, subway tunnels, demon lairs, and the shadiest parts of neighborhoods so shady that decent folks didn't only avoid them but couldn't get there if they tried, he found he was woefully unprepared to face an average suburban grocery store.

There was no turning back now, though. Whistler had arranged to make him "less disgusting", but stated clearly that after that, the cleaned-up vampire could run his own errands. He had to learn to get by in human society, anyway. When he finally met the girl, he wasn't going to let her see him as a bumbling misfit, but he needed some practice first.

He fingered the two twenty-dollar bills in his pocket, which Whistler had provided along with a few exasperated remarks about being forced to bankroll this whole operation. It seemed like a lot of money to Angelus - _I can't call myself Angelus_ - but he wasn't really sure what money was worth these days. In any case, he resolved, he'd pay it back once he was able. There had to be a way to tap into his hereditary funds again.

Everything around him was food for humans; the doors had opened into the produce section. He picked up a tomato and pretended to be inspecting it, like other shoppers were doing with various kinds of fruit and vegetables. He could smell it, sort of, and he knew that if he bit into it, his teeth would break through the skin and fresh juices would spill into his mouth. It wouldn't feed him, though, and he doubted the textures would yield much satisfaction without the taste. With vague regrets he put the tomato back on the pile, then wondered if that was allowed. Maybe it was frowned upon to hold a tomato without buying it. Maybe he should keep it just so he wouldn't look suspicious.

Of course, that would require putting it in his basket, and he didn't have one. He cursed himself for a fool and set the tomato down to head back to the door. If the girl saw him now, she'd probably just laugh at the weird pale guy who didn't know how to buy groceries.

When he made it out of the produce section, he found that the aisles were labled with signs that told which items they stocked. He meant to skip the first one, which said "International Foods", but found himself curious and ended up spending the next ten minutes reading labels in Spanish and Chinese. Most of the ingredients seemed distantly familiar, but the closest he'd ever gotten to consuming foreign food was consuming the people who lived on it. He sighed and put a jar of chili sauce back on its shelf. Just who did he think he was going to impress by knowing about ethnic cooking, anyway?

He made himself skip the canned goods aisle, and the cereal one, and the baking needs. The  
alcoholic beverage aisle made him pause for a moment, though. This, at least, he could enjoy like a human would: nobody drank booze for nutrition, or for the taste. Of course, that was also what made it dangerous for a human, or pointless for him. He kept walking. The plan was to become someone, not to toast the girl and get drunk together.

Finally he made it to the household items, his basket still empty. There were too many choices, though, so he had to stand there reading labels again until he found a few substances that could keep his little apartment clean. He also took some lightbulbs, reasoning that he should get used to living without complete darkness. Now he just needed to keep his own body clean and well-groomed.

There were even more choices in the shampoo aisle. Overwhelmed, the vampire ran a hand through his recently shortened hair and tried to remember what he had done with it last time he was leading a moderately civilized life. No, that wouldn't do. Fashions had changed since then; having an out-of-date hairstyle would draw attention, and worse, make him look stupid. He frowned and considered a bottle of gel. If only he could just ask the girl what kind of hair she liked.

"Oh, don't use that one," said a female voice right beside him, but it was the wrong girl. This one was just a fellow shopper, one who had been a little too close for comfort even before she spoke to him. "My ex used to gel his hair all the time, he tried them all. That one's best." She pointed.

"Thanks," he said curtly, and dropped her suggestion into his basket, hoping that would terminate her interest in him.

It didn't. Before he was able to turn away from her, she called him back with, "Oh, sorry? Would you be an angel and get that dye from the top shelf for me? The copper sunrise, not the wildfire."

He sized her up. She wasn't petite, and in her excessively high heels, she shouldn't have any trouble reaching the item in question. What she wanted from him was more than a few seconds of assistance, and knowing that ignited a seed of rage within him. Such foolishness deserved only his contempt, but he wasn't here to teach anyone a lesson, and he had to learn to check his impulses, sooner rather than later. He reached up and handed her the box of copper sunrise hair dye.

"Thanks, angel! You're so tall. I wish they had one of you in every aisle. Ha ha ha!" She sidled up to him as he searched for the bar soap as quickly as possible. "Just doing some hygiene shopping, huh? Yeah, I don't have much of a plan for the weekend either. Well, that's the best time to try out a new hair color, right?"

She kept it up without seeming to need any response or reaction from him until he escaped into a checkout line, hoping that he wasn't forgetting anything. The cashier gave him change and a receipt to puzzle over later and put all of his purchases into a brown paper bag, and he congratulated himself on successfully completing his first act of reintegration into human life.

As the sliding doors released him into the night, he found to his dismay that his admirer in high heels had somehow made it out of the store before him. She even appeared to be waiting for him, unless she was just leaning against the column of shopping carts because she liked it there. "Hey," she said when she saw him, dashing his hopes. "I was just gonna say, you looked kind of peeved in there, so I just wanted to say, sorry if I said something, you know. I was just trying to be friendly. You look really sad."

_What am I supposed to do here?_ He nodded in her direction. "That's alright."

He tried to step into the parking lot, but suddenly her hand was on his arm. "Hey, you don't have to be so -"

The line was crossed. He whirled on her so quickly that she gasped and stumbled backward into the carts. "I am not an angel," he growled into her face. "I'm not interested in you, and you better thank your God for that. I used to pick up women like you all the time. Not as lovers. As victims. Go home and dye your hair and think twice next time you meet a strange man at night."

He didn't turn around as he stalked away from the store, but he thought he heard her stifling a sob. _So much for my successful trip._ But really, what could he have done? The woman was playing with fire. He didn't like flirtation at the best of times, and this time he needed more than a polite rebuttal to shake her off. Besides, he had at least concealed the worst of his real self. She had been far too close to him, and beneath her perfume, she smelled of ambrosia. Shutting her up for good was doubly difficult to resist.

_If she had been the girl, though..._

The demands of his soul were so hard to navigate. Wouldn't the girl smell even better? Was he not prepared for that? He'd better be, if he ever wanted to speak to her or fight beside her. _It would be okay if she wanted to flirt with me, though. It would be different._ And that wasn't a solution at all; it was a problem of its own.

He confessed everything to Whistler the next time he saw him. After the requisite lamenting about his lot in life, the demon listened closely and then shook his head with something resembling sympathy. "Y'know what they say, never go grocery shopping when you're hungry."

"But then I realized," the vampire plowed on, "if it had been the girl, I wouldn't have even cared."

"Buffy." Whistler put down the open bottle he had been sniffing and waited. When he got no response, he continued, "You're still callin' her 'the girl', and honestly it's startin' to creep me out. Jesus, buddy, I told you what her name was weeks ago. A'right, so it's not quite the regal title you'd expect of her nubile Slayerness -"

"There's nothing wrong with her name," he cut in, feeling absurdly indignant. "It just doesn't feel right to use it. I don't _know_ her yet."

"You know her enough to decide she'd be worth a little bit a' decency if you caught her oglign your pretty face, I'd say that's something. Get over your immortal unholier-than-thou disdain for the living and you might just realize there's no 'the girl'. There's billions of 'em. That's why they got names. You're in the game now, that's good for everyone, but you gotta wake up and notice it's not all about you anymore."

"It was never about me. It was about -"

"Her?" Whistler snorted. "Don't make me laugh. You know what a Slayer does? She risks her life and usually kisses it goodbye, all for the sake of some average-at-best humans who don't even know she's there. Are you gonna help her save them or are you gonna work the angle of they're not worth it? 'Cause there's some things you can't fake, pal, and for her it's gonna matter."

The vampire cast him a baleful look. He still hadn't quite figured Whistler out. He was clearly right about some things, like bringing the vampire and the Slayer together, but just as clearly wrong about others, like what kind of hat to wear. Was his advice now part of his divine guidance, or was it a personal preference, like the hat? "Even if they are worth it," he said, "the girl - Buffy - she won't thank me for accidentally killing them if they get too close and I can't control myself."

"Not one bit," agreed Whistler. "So don't do it." He pointed his half-empty bottle at the vampire. "You got the power to snuff out the life of any human that crosses your path of damnation - except for Buffy - without a second thought. You snagged a soul, you finally figured out that power doesn't make you better than them, so now you don't do it anymore. Well, feed on this: that doesn't make you better than them either. It just makes you one of 'em. One of billions, just like your cute little ancestral enemy."

The vampire, who was not Angelus, considered this. "But I don't have a name."

"You want one?"

"You said I could become someone."

Whistler smacked himself in the forehead. "Gods monsters and strip dancers, the vamp actually listened to something I said. Never thought that would happen. A'right, you wanna be someone? How about bein' that guy in the hair gel aisle?"

_Not at all an appealing prospect._ "What's so great about that guy?"

"He helped a woman get something off a shelf."

The vampire took a moment to make sure Whistler was being serious, and concluded that he was. If this was a matter of his personal preferences, it wasn't such a bad one. Not as bad as the hat, anyway. "So you're saying I should call myself Angel? That's not exactly new."

"Make it new." The demon finally poured a pair of shots out of the bottle, pushed one across the table, and lifted the other one high. "To the girl," he said. "Buffy the Slayer."

"To her people," said Angel, wondering all over again what he had gotten himself into. "The whole world."


	9. First Snow

**Title: **First Snow

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **G

**Notes: **Christmas-themed fluff, set (early) in the Joy'verse.

* * *

"Buffy, wake up."

Buffy didn't want to wake up. She had been dreaming of battle - not a Slayer dream, but one that needed a conclusion. It was the bitter result of going to bed frustrated and angry and alone, because Angel, for no reason he could adequately explain to her, still wouldn't move in and occupy the pillow next to her. They'd been through it too many times for Buffy to want to rehash it again last night, so she had instead given him the usual kiss goodnight and allowed the parting to be on good terms, but her subconscious had taken it up after she fell asleep. Imaginary enemies faced her Scythe over and over again as she vented all that she had kept in during the day. Now she had a particularly clear vision of hacking into a huge demon, and she wasn't about to leave the moment without slaying it first.

"Buffy." A large hand covered her shoulder. "Come on, wake up."

"Go 'way," she mumbled. "I gotta kill this demon." She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, but the enemy and the Scythe and the battle were gone. "You broke my dream," she accused the hand, and then shifted beneath it as she realized who it and the accompanying voice belonged to. "Angel? Why are you here? It's early. I think it's early."

"It's snowing."

He sounded so genuinely excited that Buffy had to laugh. She had known the old soul for years; now she was finding the little boy still inside the former vampire. Keeping in mind that she still had an axe to grind with him, she answered without making any move to get up. "So you're here to remind me to dig out my car? Or did you decide that the new dream date is going out in the freezing cold first thing in the morning and making a snowman?"

"Want to?" He didn't even hesitate. He sounded completely serious. Back in the Sunnydale days, nobody would have even believed that he would turn into this, Buffy least of all.

"It's like-" she reached for the alarm clock and pulled it up close to her face. "It's seven thirty! Is that early? I can't even remember what times are supposed to be. I'm still sleeping. Goodnight."

She rolled over again and pulled the covers over her head. After a short pause, she heard Angel stand up and walk away from the bed, and she twisted herself upright, suddenly repentant, until she heard him in the kitchen. She settled back down on the pillow. It would take more than that to make him take off in a huff, she knew, but she sometimes worried that she would go too far and hurt his feelings. _Like he doesn't hurt mine. He could have woken up next to me instead of walking through the snow to get here, but no._ She tried to remember what she had been fighting in her dreams. Maybe she could drift off again and finish it.

When she woke for the second time, it was to the scent of bacon. He had made eggs and toast, too, and he put a steaming mug of hot chocolate in her hand and promised that the rest of it was waiting for her. "Now will you wake up?"

They ate in the living room, where they could watch the snow coming down outside the window. Buffy was still bundled in her blankets, Angel in a woolly grey sweater. It was beautiful, Buffy had to admit. The weather in the northeast had been difficult to get used to, but the first snow was undeniably magical - the good, wholesome kind of magical. Angel didn't say much, apparently content to just sit with her and eat, so she didn't either. By the time she had finished her hot chocolate, she felt better. Maybe she had finished her dream-slaying after all; she couldn't remember. "Okay," she said. "Let's go out."

The roads hadn't yet been plowed nor most sidewalks shoveled, but Angel knew where to find the places where the coniferous trees were thickest, keeping most of the snow on their branches and off the ground. There were a few signs of life: rabbit tracks, a cherry-red cardinal, distant voices of playing children. For the most part, though, the world seemed muffled and still, as if she and Angel had stepped into a snowy landscape painting.

"But you've probably seen this a hundred times," she remembered out loud after pointing out yet another particularly lovely part of the scenery. "Haven't you?"

"But you haven't." He smiled and brought her mittened hand up to his lips to kiss it. "And...I haven't either. Not like this." He stopped walking. "Here, look."

The snow was still falling in lazy swirls, and he held out his hand to catch a few flakes on the fingertips of his dark gloves, then carefully positioned them before Buffy's eyes. "Do you see?"

She didn't, at first, but then another snowflake fell, and she understood what he was showing her. It wasn't a speck or a glob or a chip of snow, like the snow appeared to be as it fell. It was a tiny but perfectly intricate hexagonal shape, loops and points shimmering with symmetrical beauty in two dimensions, as if handcrafted by microscopic skilled hands. Then it was gone, melted away by Angel's body heat, but others were arriving on his clothes and hers, each with its own delicate pattern. "They really look like that," she said wonderingly. "They look like they do in window decals. I never knew."

"And they're all different," Angel added. "Even if you watch them all day."

"So that thing they say about snowflakes is actually true?"

He nodded, happy with his success but now looking at her face instead of their hands. "It's true. So, is this a good date?"

The snowflakes on his sleeve crushed against her cheek as she leaned against him. "It's always a good date."

"But there's still something bothering you about it."

She sighed, but it was better that they were talking about it, she supposed. "I don't get why we're still dating at all. Dating is for people who are trying to figure out who they want to be with. I thought we figured that out a long time ago. Don't you want to be with me? Don't you believe I want to be with you?"

"I believe it," he said in a low voice, no longer the kid at heart but the old soul, who had borne too much to trust in happiness.

"Then why won't you move in with me? Why am I still stuck trying to ignore my raging hormones whenever you're around? Why aren't we engaged or anything?"

Before he replied, he leaned down and kissed her lips, which made her wonder if he was making up in advance for saying something she wasn't going to like. "I'm old-fashioned," he began, and she frowned, undecided on whether she liked that. "And I've made a lot of mistakes, and most of them didn't come from being too careful. You always wanted a normal boyfriend. Now you can have one."

"That's what I wanted when I was eighteen. Since then I've kind of done the normal boyfriend thing to death."

"But I haven't."

She looked up at him, blinked some snow out of her eyelashes, and looked again. He seemed worried, and not about his nose turning red. It was still so odd to see Angel's nose turning red. "Let's walk," she said.

She couldn't tell if she was following him or if they were both walking in a random direction, but the trees were becoming more of a forest, with a greater hush within them and long shadows crisscrossed along the path. Through them Buffy could see the ground slope upward into a small mountain, snow-capped pines poking up all over it. "I thought we could come back here and cut our Christmas tree when it's time," said Angel. "If you want. I checked, it's legal."

The thought of it brought a smile to her face. She had already told Dawn that Christmas would be at her place, and she wanted to do it right. "Do you ever think about anything except what I want?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Do you want me to?" They both laughed, and he took her hand. "I'm sorry if I was impatient with you this morning. This is why I wanted to bring you out here. For the Christmas tree."

"It's okay," she said. "I can be a little impatient myself." She took a deep breath of the cold, pine-scented air. "I never really thought about how you might need some time to get used to being a human boyfriend before we took it to the next level. You should be the one to set the pace, you've earned it. Tell me when you're ready."

"Buffy, I...I don't think I've been totally honest with you about this."

_Oh, this is fun,_ thought Buffy. Out loud she kept it at "Oh?", with a raised eyebrow for good measure.

He half-smiled - his mischievous face, not the guilty one, but it was gone in a flash. "I'm not really that old-fashioned," he said. "I'm a coward. If I have something good I'm afraid to take any risks with it. Letting me set the pace might not be the best idea."

"So that's your big fib? Okay, I can handle the driver's seat. Better than I can handle a literal driver's seat, anyway. Incidentally, you're still old-fashioned. Can't just drop that one on the discard pile."

"There was one more fib, actually. I didn't just bring you out here for the tree."

"Geez, you're just full of deception, aren't you?" She brushed off a melting snowflake that was tickling her nose. "So what was your real plan?"

He waited until she was done clearing her face of precipitation and locked eyes with her. "To propose."

The silence of the forest suddenly became noticeable again. "Are...you proposing?"

"Yes."

"Isn't that sort of like taking a risk?" she challenged him.

To her surprise, he shook his head emphatically. "No. Accepting it is. But you're the brave one, so I think you can handle it."

She stood on her tiptoes, kissed his lips, and said, "Then I accept. Let's go home and make out like teenagers."

As they followed their footprints back the way they had come, Buffy remembered the dream she'd had. She must have killed the demon before she woke up, she decided. It wasn't going to be bothering her anymore.


	10. Fragile

**Title:** Fragile

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **G

**Notes: **Very short early Joy'verse.

* * *

Buffy put down the magazine she hadn't really been reading as Angel emerged from the doctor's office and into the waiting room, his right hand peeking out from a pristine white cast that went up to his elbow and was held up by a sling around his neck. "Nice," she said as she maneuvered his good arm into a careful embrace. "Hey, you know when a kid has one of these he lets all his friends sign it. It helps with jealousy issues."

He didn't respond to the jest with his usual tolerant smile or riposte, and Buffy turned her attention to getting them out of the hospital as soon as possible. In the parking lot they both headed toward the driver's side of their car, and then Angel made a disgusted sound and stalked around the hood to open the passenger door. Buffy resisted the urge to make any droll comments; she knew he wasn't really complaining about her driving. He preferred to be the one behind the wheel and she preferred to let him, but they both needed to get used to changing their habits to fit the circumstances.

Once they were both buckled in she put her hands on the wheel without turning the ignition, and let out a long breath. "Angel."

He said nothing.

"Angel, we need to talk about this."

"It's just a broken arm. It'll heal."

Buffy slammed her hand down on the wheel in anger, accidentally hitting the horn with one finger and releasing a weak blare into the parking lot. "That's the point! It's just a broken arm! Do you have _any_ idea how lucky you are? A no-big-deal injury like this and then getting out before they attacked again? You should be dead. If it happens again you will be dead."

Angel looked at her strangely, eyes intent and mouth flat. "Then it won't happen again. I was sloppy. I should've used a-"

"It won't happen again because you're not coming with me again." There. She had said it.

"No," he shot back, wasting no time on surprise. "I'm still strong enough. I have a young body. I'm not letting you fight alone."

"I can fight with other Slayers."

"Fine, then fight with them _and_ me. Buffy, this is just one incident. You're overreacting."

She didn't answer for a moment, trying to figure out how to say what she needed to say. He knew damn well that she wasn't overreacting, but he was never going to admit it on his own. Maybe the injury hadn't scared him as much as it did her, but the implications of it must have. She made her voice as firm and toneless as possible. "You're a liability."

"What?" he said faintly.

"I'm sorry, but it's true. You're not still strong enough. You're, you're fragile. It's like I have this priceless vas and instead of keeping it safe I'm carrying it around with me and sooner or later it's going to slip out of my hands and I can't, I can't fight demons with this priceless vas on me, okay? I can't keep protecting you."

Angel put his forehead into his left hand and rubbed his temples. "I didn't think it would be like this," he muttered.

Buffy's heart froze up. "What? Us?"

"Being human."

"Oh." She wasn't sure what else to say. "Well, it is. I guess. For some of us more than others."

He reached over and took her hand from where it was still resting on the steering wheel. "I'll get used to it. I don't want you to worry about me."

She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his ring, almost unconsciously. "I try not to. But I can't just get a new vas, you know? You're not that easy to replace."


	11. Our True History

**Title: **Our True History

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **Rosebud (under 500 words) examining Buffy's thought process in "Angel".

* * *

He says he loved me from the first moment he saw me. He says he remade himself, became someone, fueled by that brief flash of inspiration. He guarded me for months, his existence defined solely by his invisible presence in my life.

Before I knew any of that, I knew that I wanted him. I knew that I liked him. I learned what he was, and I knew I hated him, and then I learned more about what he was. He wasn't someone to want or to like or to hate. He was someone who wouldn't feed on my mother, but who felt the demonic urge to do so, and resisted. I'll never know how that feels, but he had been dealing with it for decades before I met him, and he's still dealing with it today. His nature tells him to tear my throat out, and his heart tells him he's strong enough to kiss me instead. How do you go on a date with that? How do you put a stake in it? How do you do anything but love it?

Nothing that happened between me and Angel has been easy. You know the story. My friends and I still talk about it today, with humor or sympathy, or occasionally, sheer fury. We know how these memories have become part of me, and we can live with it.

But I know better than to share all of my secrets, and even Angel himself doesn't know the hardest part of our true history: that I fell in love with him when he said he wanted to kill me. No girl should ever have to know that about herself. I can't explain it or justify it. I can only look back, remember his shadowy eyes darting timorously over my neck, and think, _yes, it was then._

Now his presence is no longer invisible but gone altogether. Miles and more separate us, and we go out into the night alone, plunging our stakes into empty hearts, full of contempt for the vampires who follow their nature.


	12. Pair Skating

**Title: **Pair Skating

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **G

**Notes: **Set during S3, one of those scenes we never got to see of Buffy and Angel just having fun together.

* * *

Conditions on the ice were perfect, Buffy was rapidly regaining her atrophied skills, and Angel had just appeared at the gate at the other end of the rink. She crossed the space in a matter of seconds, sliding to a stop in front of where he sat pulling on a pair of skates. "Found some good ones?"

Angel nodded, his fingers occupied with tightening the laces on his skates. "Found some rental quality ones, anyway. They'll do for now."

"For now? Are you going to get your own?"

He grinned. "If we make a habit out of this, I think I'll have to. Feels weird being in another man's footwear. Alright, here I come."

Buffy pushed herself back to give him room to stand. "We should totally make a habit out of this. Habits are good. Habits are something about highly effective people, I read that on a book cover."

"Well, now I don't have to ask if you've read any good book covers lately." Angel was moving out onto the ice almost as soon as he was on his feet, gliding slowly away from the rail and twisting so that he was still facing Buffy.

"It was a bestseller," she informed him. Rather than follow right away, she kept to her spot and watched him skate on, waiting for a wobble or a misstep.

None came. His movements were basic but graceful, the silver blades of his skates flashing as they whisked him through a precise half-circle. "Aren't you coming?" he asked as he completed the turn and faced her again.

She frowned and crossed her arms. "You're good at this."

"I'm...sorry?" he laughed.

"You said you hadn't done it before! I had my heart set on seeing you all awkward and novice-y so I could hold you up and tell you what to do."

"You can still tell me what to do."

Cheered instantly, Buffy went forward to join him, catching his hand in hers. "Be careful about greenlighting me like that," she warned him. "I can think of plenty of things to tell you to do."

He squeezed her hand affectionately, making her wish she had gone without her gloves. She would just have to remember to drop them someplace where she wouldn't forget about them. "Oh!" she said suddenly. "This means we can do throw jumps! I always wanted to try all the pair skating moves and I never had a partner for it. Okay, totally over the grudge about you being a natural."

"Throw jumps?" There was an uneasy pause in which Buffy remembered the typical male aversion to figure skating, and then he said,

"Just give me a few minutes to get used to being on ice, okay?"

"You're the best, times a million. Take your time."

"And you'll have to tell me what to do."

"Even better. So what gives?" she asked, picking up her previous strand of conversation. "Secret practice with Rollerblades? Vampiric affinity for cold things?"

Before answering, he let go of her hand and quickly crossed in front of her, taking up her other hand before she had even slowed down. "Just making use of balance. The physical part isn't a problem. And I watched a hockey game once, in New York."

"Okay, I believed that up until the you going to a sports event."

"I did. You can sneak into anywhere if you—-anyway, after that I always wanted to try it myself."

Buffy smiled, imagining Angel's haphazard transition to the modern world. "Must have been a great game."

He shrugged. "Not really. A few of the players on my team made some bad calls, and I kept thinking about how I would have done it differently."

They had gradually been picking up speed, and finally they released each other's hands to go faster yet. Buffy couldn't tell if they were racing each other or not. She passed him and smirked at him over her shoulder, and then he grinned as he overtook her once more, but it felt more like the competition only existed for the sake of urging them both into the height of their abilities. They were rushing together toward an unseen destination, and if one of them could win the race, they both would.

"So let me get this straight," Buffy gasped out as they wheeled around the end of the rink once more. "The first hockey game of your life, and you already had a team?"

Angel's voice, like her own, was stifled by exertion despite his lack of breath. "There's no point to it if you don't choose a side."

"Maybe that means there's no point to it."

"I don't think so." He slowed enough to hold eye contact for a few seconds. "It wasn't a great game, but seeing it back then helped me. In a real battle, we don't get to choose, we just have to figure out who's right and side with them. When nobody is right or wrong, we can be with who we want."

They were both coasting down to a leisurely glide. Buffy took off her gloves and tossed them near the gate as she passed it. She hadn't quite caught up to Angel again before she said, "Still doesn't make much sense to me. If the battle isn't real, why would you care which side you're on?"

"Because." He held out his hand and she reached for it once more. "It means you're part of something. It means you have people around you. And it doesn't matter who's best at the game, because you're just there to have fun."

Still flushed from racing, Buffy replied with more thought to the warmth in her belly than to her own words. "Is this the kind of advice you ever give yourself? Hang out with people and have fun? Because if so, I think you should listen."

"I know what team I'm on." Angel smiled. "I'm ready for the throw jumps when you are."


	13. Without Me

**Title: **Without Me

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes:** Supposedly, the AtS episode "You're Welcome" was supposed to feature an appearance from Buffy rather than Cordelia, but SMG couldn't make it. This is my take on how the episode might have gone if Buffy was the guest star.

* * *

"Thanks."

The inadequate little word hung in the air between them, Buffy responding with no more than a momentary quirk to her lips, and Angel searched for a way to make it somehow larger. He was humbled before her, but so had he always been: the challenge was in expressing it without debasing himself. "I couldn't have done it without you," he added.

Buffy took a few aimless steps around the office, taking in its intimidating décor without betraying any feelings she might have about it. "I know," she said, and turned back around to level her gaze at him, apparently losing all interest in the room. "That's what worries me. Since when is there anything you can't do without me? When was the last time I bailed you out of one of your own battles?"

He knew it was rhetorical, but he couldn't stop himself from calculating the answer, and he clenched his jaw to keep from speaking it. "I don't mean it that way," he said instead. "Fighting him wasn't the problem. I just didn't see it until you came."

"Yeah, well, I have to say this new intelligence doesn't convince me to revise my answer." Buffy shook her head wryly, then returned to wandering around the office. When she got to the desk she ran a hand across it, picked up and set down a silver pen, and hopped up to perch on the edge, her feet dangling in front of her. "I figured that if you'd been flying solo long enough to attract a nemesis, you'd have a healthier view of your own competence."

Angel raised an eyebrow. "That was a joke, right?"

She hesitated for the briefest moment, and then laughed along with him. "It must have been. What was I thinking."

The tension was breaking down, bit by bit, and Angel allowed himself to pace across the room and sit down on the arm of the couch, a little closer to Buffy. "Lindsey isn't really a nemesis," he said, feeling it was somehow important to explain it to her. "He's just a guy with a chip on his shoulder."

"Human?"

Angel looked down at his hands, mentally tracing his history with Lindsey back to the first time he had entered the Wolfram & Hart headquarters. It all would have been so easy if the place wasn't full of humans. Vampires made simple, clean targets. Lindsey was frightening in comparison, at least in Angel's eyes. He sighed. "Definitely started that way."

"Well I'd say he's a prime human example, under all those punk-voodoo tattoos," she remarked. "You think he's seeing anyone?"

The floor seemed to tilt beneath Angel as he snapped his head up, gaping. Buffy was smiling coyly at him and swinging her feet like a child sitting in a tree. He glared. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"If I had that kind of power, it would make slaying a lot easier." Her mischievous smile wouldn't leave her face, and finally he relented and returned it, which appeared to give her some satisfaction. She slid off the desk and leaned against it instead. "Actually, I was trying to ease us into the part of the reunion where you ask leading questions about my love life while pretending to be all nonchalant."

He sighed, considered, and then shrugged and said, "How's your love life?"

"None of your business," she replied promptly.

"I figured as mu—-"

"Nothing."

Rather than ask outright, Angel went silent and waited for her to give some shape to her interruption. Whether or not it was any of his business, she was the one who had brought it up. There must have been something she wanted him to know.

Buffy fidgeted under his gaze, and when she spoke, there was a slight stammer coloring her voice. "There's nothing. To find out about, I mean. About my love life. I don't have the time, and there's nobody who...I have a whole lot of X-chromosome company lately. Not so much the other kind."

He wanted to tell her he was immeasurably pleased to hear that. He wanted to tell her he was sorry she was lonely. He wanted to find out if she knew how tired she looked, and maybe throw in an offhand comment about how tricky it was to know for sure when your batch of cookies was done. "I could give Lindsey your number," he said.

"Thanks, but I think I started off on the wrong foot with him." She smiled wanly. "I should go."

"You should," he agreed—-too quickly, if her offended expression was any indication. He softened his tone and tried to explain. "By now everyone in this building knows who you are. They call me the boss, but whatever influence I have doesn't mean a thing if they see a threat to their power base. You're not safe here."

For a few seconds she closed her eyes, her head bowed as if in prayer, and then opened them and said, "Neither are you."

"I know."

"I'm not safe anywhere. And again with the neither are you."

"I know. Hey," he pointed out, trying once more for levity, "it's just like old times."

She was having none of it. "Angel, I can't stand the thought of you working here at Evil & Evil. Heebie jeebies doesn't even begin to describe it. If it were up to me you would—-"

He cut in there, just loudly enough to be heard. "But it's not up to you."

"No." Her fingers drummed against the desk with annoyance. "That's actually kind of where I was going with this if you had the attention span to let me finish. Y'know, my girls let me make uninterrupted speeches, like, every day."

Suppressing a grin, he mimed zipping his lips.

"...And you're not one of my girls. I know. I'm not your leader and I don't fit into this new insanity of yours. If you decide that it's the best thing right now, my choices are pretty much accept it or don't. But I don't know how I'm supposed to accept it if you're not sure yourself."

Angel nodded slowly, picturing Connor's easy smile and caring family. "I accept it."

"Then I guess I should go." Buffy took a few steps forward, and Angel matched her movements until they were standing inches from each other. There was a beat in which he wasn't sure if he was supposed to kiss her or just keep looking down into her misty green eyes, although either option was fine with him.

Finally she broke the eye contact, not to go in for the kiss, but to lay her head against his chest and wrap her arms around him. She sighed heavily when his own hands found their places, but all it took was the touch of her hair against his cheek and he was back in the past with her. She used to come to him for comfort. He used to believe he could give it to her.

Buffy asked him where to find the elevator and insisted on leaving the building without an escort. Angel took the stairs and watched her back until she was gone.


End file.
